In general, handwriting recognition is the ability of a computer to receive and interpret intelligible handwritten input from sources such as paper documents, photographs, touch-screens and other devices. Among various recognition techniques, a complete handwriting recognition system also handles formatting, performs correct segmentation into characters and finds the most plausible words. For handwriting recognition providers that hypothesize cut points between characters and recognize the segments between these cuts, higher accuracy in identifying correct cuts between characters leads to higher text recognition accuracy. Reducing the number of incorrect cuts, such as in the middle of a character, may improve recognition speed and accuracy. One technique may be to track the overall horizontal overlap of characters in handwritten input and use the distance between characters to determine whether to make a cut in the handwritten input for recognition of individual characters. However, in the case of overwriting of a character in handwritten input, it can be difficult to determine where to make a candidate character cut in the handwritten input corresponding to a previous character or a new character that is written over the previous character.